1. The Final Girl
And the final, ultimate slasher movie cliche - there's always (well nearly) a girl left standing - usually the only one left standing - when the end credits roll. She might not be the main character, she might not be the most interesting, attractive, engaging girl in the world, but chances are that there is a 'final girl' as horror theory buff Carol Clover coined her. The ultimate survivor. It doesn't matter if it's in the spooky slashers to Ripley in the
Alien movies to every Laurie, Sidney, Sally, Stretch and slasher heroine inbetween - we always find a plucky or lucky girl at the end of the film, either escaping the killer or killing him herself in (hopefully) epic fashion. As to why it's always a girl at the very least guaranteed as a survivor, that's up for closer debate and inspection. Surely in the power-based world of the slasher flick, a jock or more stereotypically physically superior male is the best candidate for surviving the horrors of a deranged serial killer? And yet time after time, it's the central female who proves herself to be the hero of the story, the Theseus slaying the raging Minotaur. Clover suggested in her book 'Men, Women and Chainsaws' that the final girl changes when she is isolated and forced to face the killer in the movie's final act - she stops being a typically passive character and changes into an active equal, one who puts the killer in the dirt. It also really seems to have changed in years - from Laurie Strode being rescued by Dr Loomis, we have self-sufficient heroines who rise and kill the bad guy without any pesky help. The men in the audience who watch it previously identify with the killer, but now they identify more with the plucky heroine who takes down the killer. The final girl is the ultimate horror movie cliche but one which pleasingly survives - in a similarly active genre of movies, action flicks, men outnumber women at least seven to one and usually as generic butt-whoopers or trophy love interests. In horror movies, the final girl is the woman who goes on a journey that is both hers and hers alone and also an ancient one, journeying from seeming powerlessness to ultimate strength. Let's keep this cliche going, please.